Privacy Policy

At The Really Useful Health Company we believe in the potential of shared experiences about your menopause. Because this may involve you sharing sensitive information about your life and health, we also believe in the importance of clear and transparent privacy guidelines. As a user it’s important that you know how we use and share your data, and how you can control what happens to information you share in The Really Useful Health Company.

Here’s our privacy statement, and a guide for our members.

1. SHARING AND CONTROLLING INFORMATION

WHAT IS THE REALLY USEFUL HEALTH COMPANY?

The Really Useful Health Company is registered in England and Wales. Its registered office address 1 Dukes Court, Brighton, BN1 1BS United Kingdom.

The Really Useful Health Company will record and store your personal information (name, email address and so on) since we have a “legitimate interest” to do so: to provide you with our services. We will try to minimise the amount of data we collect, and most details are optional: you only need to give us your email address and a username (we recommend that your username does not contain your real name or email address!).

WHO CAN SEE MY PERSONAL IDENTIFIABLE INFORMATION?

None of your personally identifiable information (i.e. email address, postcode/zipcode, date of birth) is ever visible to other users or third parties without your explicit consent. We encourage you to choose a non-identifiable username as this is visible to other users.

WHO CAN SEE THE BLOGS AND QUESTIONS I WRITE?

Comments on the blogs and your user profile are only visible to logged-in users (i.e. registered The Really Useful Health Company members). If there is anything that you are not comfortable sharing with the The Really Useful Health Company community, you should not include it in your profile page, posts, questions, comments, answers and so on.

WHO CAN SEE MY NON-PERSONALLY IDENTIFIABLE INFORMATION?

The Really Useful Health Company may anonymize and aggregate information collected through the site. This information may then be published as a study or shared with our research partners. You can always control whether your information is used in this way by following the instructions below.

CAN I CONTROL WHO SEES MY INFORMATION?

You always control who can see your information and how it is used. You can change your data sharing settings at any time, to stop sharing your information with our research partners. You will still be able to use our site.

WILL I BE CONTACTED FOR RESEARCH PURPOSES?

We may contact you for research purposes, such as taking part in surveys or scientific studies, or helping us improve the behaviour change techniques we offer. In this case it will always be The Really Useful Health Company that contacts you first, not a research partner directly, as we will never share your email address or other details with third parties without your permission. You can opt out of being contacted for research purposes at any time.

2. WHO CAN ACCESS INFORMATION AND HOW

THE REALLY USEFUL HEALTH COMPANY USE OF DATA

We will use the data from our website to improve our services. This includes usage statistics, and analysis and evaluations of how our members use the service and how they benefit from it. The results and findings from these may be shared internally at The Really Useful Health Company, with our funders and other stakeholders, or with the general public. No identifiable personal information will ever be shared.

PARTNER ORGANISATIONS AND OTHER AFFILIATES

We may give our partner organisations, academic researchers, and other affiliates access to anonymised and aggregated data from The Really Useful Health Company about members who have chosen to share their data. Any affiliate which The Really Useful Health Company is in partnership and who has agreed to and filled out the Terms of Engagement. Just to be clear: we will not share your personal information.

MEMBERSHIP FEES AND FINANCIAL DATA

The Really Useful Health Company does not store any of your financial details, such as bank account or credit card numbers. Payments, such as monthly membership fees, to The Really Useful Health Company are made via third parties who do not share your financial details with us. Please note that these online payment providers have their own terms and conditions and privacy policies.

3. THE Really Useful Health Company BUSINESS MODEL

The The Really Useful Health Company basic services are available for free for all members. The Membership Site is a paid for service as our products. Costs are always made clear to you.

Third parties and our shop may pay us an affiliate fee if you click through and/or use their services. We do not sell your data to third parties.

4. PRIVACY AND SECURITY

The Really Useful Health Company applies industry standard IT security features. Our service is hosted on third party servers, and we have contracts in place with our service providers which require them to implement security measures to protect the data they hold. Our website and membership database is hosted in a protected IT environment with regular backups to keep our (and your!) information safe and secure.

COOKIES AND OTHER TRACKER TECHNOLOGIES

Our websites put small files (known as ‘cookies’) onto your computer to collect information about how you browse the site.

Cookies are used to:

measure how you use the website so it can be updated and improved based on your needs

You’ll normally see a message on the site before we store a cookie on your computer. Find out more about how to manage cookies. You can also opt out of Google Analytics cookies which we use on all our websites. You can block cookies by activating the setting on your browser that allows you to refuse the setting of all or some cookies. If you use your browser settings to block all cookies (including essential cookies) you may not be able to access all or parts of our websites or some functions on them.

Please note that third parties (including, for example, advertising networks and providers of external services like web traffic analysis services) may also use cookies, over which we have no control. These cookies are likely to be analytical/performance cookies or targeting cookies.

The basic principle of data retention for The Really Useful Health Company is that we only retain personal data for as long as we need it: to provide our services to our members and other customers, and to enable us to operate as a social business. If possible, we will anonymise data that we store (for example for impact evaluation purposes it is not necessary to identify people).

Most of The Really Useful Health Company databases are “live”, i.e. they are in constant use and updated as and when new information arises (including deletion of records that are known to be no longer accurate, or where their deletion has been requested by a customer). These databases are therefore retained indefinitely. Sometimes it is necessary for business purposes to create new files, documents, or databases using information in one of the “live” databases. Such files etc should only be retained for as long as they are required. A regular review of all folders should be conducted to (i) identify and (ii) either anonymise or delete any files etc that hold personal data.

It is prudent to keep backup copies of some data (in case of technical problems or malicious attacks). The Really Useful Health Company does create such copies of our user data on our websites – these are stored at the same location as the live websites, and are only retained for a maximum of one month. We also take occasional snapshots of these databases and store them on our shared Google Drive, with restricted access (for only The Really Useful Health Company staff). These backups are retained for a maximum of 12 months.

5. COMMUNICATIONS WITH YOU

By becoming a The Really Useful Health Company member, you agree that we may provide you with information about our services (whether by email or any other medium) that we consider appropriate. You may opt out of receiving these materials and notifications by writing to or emailing us to inform us that you wish to be removed from our contact list.

6. IF YOU NEED MORE INFORMATION

HOW DO I MAKE A SUBJECT ACCESS REQUEST?

You have the right to ask for a copy of the information we hold about you and to have any inaccuracies in your information corrected. If you wish to make a subject access request we will ask you to:

Provide proof of identity including your name and any other personal information you have shared with us.

For your security we will only send a response to a subject access request to you the email address registered on this website. You should also note that if we are unable to verify your identity, it may not be possible to provide you with the information requested. For further information please email [email protected]

I WANT TO MAKE A COMPLAINT ABOUT A PRIVACY OR INFORMATION MATTER

If you want to make a complaint related to privacy or our use of information, please email us at [email protected].